A surge in the uptake of services on the National Broadband Network (NBN) in the last five months has been thanks to a large increase in activations for existing housing premises, according to the latest round of weekly rollout data provided by NBN Co.

The company yesterday released the second of its new weekly rollout information, revealing that in the last week, an additional 8893 premises were passed by fibre and fixed wireless during the week, to bring the total premises passed by fibre to 304,840, with 232,017 of those able to order a service on the NBN.

Retailers activated a total of 2,632 services for the week, including 2,100 on the fibre and 532 on the satellite and wireless networks. There are now a total of 109,862 premises connected to the NBN.

Looking deeper into the figures provided, ZDNet has determined that in the close to five months since July 7, the percentage of brownfields customers connecting to the NBN has increased by over 5 percent. The number of premises activated in brownfields areas almost doubled in that period, going from 21,233 on July 7 to 41,881 as of November 3, but the number of serviceable premises also increased from 112,143 to 164,501. An increase from 19 percent uptake to 25.5 percent uptake.

Click to enlarge.(Image: Chris Duckett/ZDNet)

Comparatively, greenfields premises have increased from 13,610 activated premises out of 44,603 premises passed to 22,461 premises active out of 67,516 premises passed; an increase from 31 percent of premises activated to 33 percent.

While greenfields still leads the way with the proportion of active customers, the results show that brownfields is catching up. It is expected that the rate of uptake in brownfields areas would improve as Telstra prepares to switch off the existing copper network, but the first 25,000 premises to have the copper network switched off aren't due to be disconnected until May 2014.

But a likely impact on the take-up is both NBN Co and ISPs in those areas now currently pushing to get existing customers to switch over to the NBN prior to the switch-off date.